A previous customer, with a slow celeron 1GHz PC, rang asking about getting a newer computer. Given what he uses the computer for (dialup internet, watching DVDs, and some simple games), I tell him that he doesn’t really need a new computer, a windows reinstall is all that is needed.

He says ok, and I book a time to do the reinstall.

A short time later, he calls, saying a friend of his will sell a HP (P4, 2.2Ghz, 512MB ram, 80Gb Hdd), for $150. I say sure, thats a great price, I’ll install XP onto the new PC instead.

I swap DVD writer and CDROM drives between computers.

During the install, it turns out that XP doesn’t have the correct drivers for video, sound, and the ethernet port. Downloading the correct drivers could take a very long time over dialup, so I take the PC to the office.

The video and sound drivers are easy to find and install (via Miscosoft update), but the ethernet port takes a bit of time… I eventually find a website that has the correct driver, and I install it.

Everything seems to work well, but I remember his previous PC had some problems with DVD playback (probably due to some windows corruption, or CODEC problems… the playback was very slow, with many skipped frames… displaying about 1 frame every second or two).

So I try playing a dvd, and I get an error using windows media player (I think it was error C00D116A). The error indicated that the DVD is set for the wrong dvd region, or that the appropriate DVD decoder isn’t installed.

Since I installed Nero, then I should have the correct decoding software. And I doubt my customer would know how to change the dvd region.

I search the internet, but I find no solution. I’m sure this has to work.

I try windows media player, jetaudio, the nero dvd player, but they all refuse to work.

Someone in a forum mentioned using Media Player Classic. Given I’ve tried everything I can think of, I install it… and it works!

I can’t understand why only MPC works, where 3 other mainstream player refuse to work, but hey, it works, and I don’t have the time to wonder why.

When I deliver the PC to the customer, I explain the peculiarity with playing DVDs, setup his internet connection, and I’m on my way.